This post was published long before the Mists of Pandara Expansion.
The tips and techniques explained here may be outdated.

First Impressions

– LOVE the fact that my computer is back and working. It’s a thing of ultimate beauty!
– Love the new Grid. Pet support and visual heals are now built directly into Grid. Love Love Love it.
– Love the new Omen. I know some people are really hating it but I kinda like it. Changing the warning noise to “AAOOOGAH” helped somewhat. I’ve also had to get a new update about every 8 hours.
– Love the new Mik’s Scrolling Battle Text. It now shows the spell icon instead of the spell name. Also the warning messages “XXX becomes enraged” OR “XXX raises his charged fist” moved down to the bottom of the screen (much closer to where I’m actually looking).
[Edited: Ugh, wall of text crits you for 14k, you die. ]
– Love the fact that I can switch off pet/creations names. Now I need to figure out how to do that with a macro so I can have my “Running around, see everyone’s name” vs “Running an instance wanna see only mob names” setting flip with a hit of the button.
– I -love- the ability to put raid signs into chat {skull} it’s very cool. It’d be cooler if I could add it to macros. Something along the lines of /say Banishing %t (%{raidicon}). I’ve posted about this on the forums. I hope to know more soon. (Edited to add:/m /cast polymorph
/run local x = GetRaidTargetIndex(“focus”) or “0″ if x==”0″ then SendChatMessage (‘Sheeping ‘..UnitName(“focus”),’SAY’) else SendChatMessage(‘Sheeping ‘..UnitName(“focus”)..’ {rt’..x..’}.’,'SAY’) end
– I’m kinda -meh- about the new combat log. I think I need to play with it more before I can have a better reaction.
– Hate that people can link abilities in chat (esp in Trade). Trade was an even worse cess pool than normal because of this.
– Outfitter’s kinda busted for druids. I guess I’m lucky I’m not a druid. I did find that it worked very very slowly when I was flipping through items to figure out which would be best to add to this outfit. I think I’ll download an update in a few days and see if it gets better.
– Like the new dailies.. of course I’m lame and only found the two on the island and two in HFP but now that I’m aware of the other three I’ll go and try them as well. I found all of the dailies easy to do on either Lilac (Afflic Lock) or Tatia (Holy Paladin). I was afraid that being on a non-DPS toon would inhibit me.. but that wasn’t the case. I -did- find the felblood one a little difficult on Lilac only because she has no easy way to tag something.. so had a hard time tagging the mob before everyone else standing around. It was much easier the second day when there wasn’t as much competition for the mobs.
– Hate the fact that the scroll that transports you to HFP only works once. That’s lame and makes it hard to get to those HFP quests. It seems especially lame to have a transporter -right there- and not be able to use it.
– Haven’t really noticed any change with Holy Shock. It doesn’t seem more powerful nor am I noticing the mana drain. So I guess that’s kind of -meh-
– Turn Undead (Rank 3) is now Turn Evil (Rank 1). I had to go back and update my focus macro to use the new name. If I used it a lot I might be tempted to make a Turn Undead/Turn Evil macro so I could use a modifier to cast Turn Undead (lower mana cost) when needed. As it is, I think I’ve used this exactly once. So I don’t see this change as being real necessary.
– Mages should be able to carry more than 4 stacks of mage food. That would make it easier for them to empty the table and have extras for late joiners.
– When running Magisters’ Terrace (MagT?) we had someone who needed to leave when we were quite deep into the instance. We got another person and then a couple of the group started the long run to the summoning stone. Then finally it dawned on me and I said “Hey wait, Lilac can summon them here”. It’s hard to break old habits.
– Speaking of Magister’s Terrace… I can’t decide whether I like it or not. Tatia is mostly done with Kara.. so there’s nothing really in MagT for her. Lilac is just starting Kara.. so MagT is -really- hard. In fact although she’s started it 3 times Lilac has yet to finish it (all three attempts were either interrupted (by kara run) or called on account of it being too late). It’s nice to have new content.. but.. well.. I’m not exactly blown away by it. We did have a 20-slot bag drop from trash and that was very nice.. and I’m kinda leching for one of those phoenis hatchlings.. but other than that.. kinda -meh-.
– OO speaking of pets.. I -love- the little flame from the HFP quest. I -so- wish I could have that as a pet elsewhere.

Havent had time much to play since 2.4 landed since been busy working at night and sleeping during the day. However have only had time to do the first 3 intro quests to the new area. When I logged out I was doing the quest that took you through the portal into HP.

Won’t get to see much till the weekend. I’m sure lots of Tanks are in demand to run the new instance on regular and heroics. I can imagine as soon as I log in this weekend I’m going to get tackled to run the Heroic version by friends. I’ll have an excuse waiting……….I’m not yet attuned! Afterall I haven’t had time to play as yet.

Heroic MgT and I are currently wrestling for the victor. I might play dirty and poke its eyes out. I hadnt really poked and prodded at new Grid because I was too busy experiencing hate at Omen2. I realized this was because I was installing it 2 hours after servers came up and the poor author was still updating like a maniac. Its getting better everyday… I still like old Omen better. I hate to consider myself a traditionalist but it was just something I was Used to. I haven’t even dared to poke at “Healer mode” yet.

Agreed on the silly teleport scroll. Apparently building a permanent teleporter is part of one of the take back phases. Bleh!